Sobering graphics to scale: ice sheets 21,000 years ago versus today’s skylines.
“Data adapted from ‘The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum’ by A.S. Dyke et. al., which was way better than the sequels ‘The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum: The Meltdown’ and ‘The Laurentide and Innuitian ice sheets during the Last Glacial Maximum: Continental Drift’.”
h/t to reader “View from the Solent”
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Mark, it would seem adaptation would be the way to deal with it. There will be larger coastal area and the southern hemisphere is not glaciated as much, but the climate will change. Irrigation would also be helpful. We’ll just have to see. At least our farmers know to adapt and what to change.Those are just my thoughts.
Tom in Florida should be ok. Of course the ones in denial will have difficulty. 🙂
Duster says:
June 15, 2013 at 11:50 pm
I think S.D. skeptic was just kidding….
I don’t think New York City had that much ice.
http://www.state.nj.us/dep%2Fnjgs%2Fenviroed%2Finfocirc%2Fglacial.pdf says:
At the terminal moraine, the glacier will only be a few hundred feet thick, I believe.
A good example of why cold kills. It then entombs you, then crushes you, and if that weren’t enough, it then destroys the neighborhood.
Why Warmistas want more of the cold is beyond me. It makes no sense whatsoever.
The problem seems to be that when paying attention only to orbital parameters, something else directly related gets left out. At present time our northern and southern hemispheres track rather closely in temperatures yet the solar TSI varies with the year and perihelion is near the NH winter solstace, providing the SH with significantly more power than the NH. The difference is that most land is in the NH and most ocean water is in the SH. It also means that more water is available in the SH for evaporative cooling and cloud formation and it means that the surface albedo in the SH is much less, oceans being more like 0.04 and most land being 0.12 to 0.16. Of course heat flow will try to minimize temperature differences as well but it would seem we have a fairly decent balance over a significant variation of actual solar energy absorbed in the two hemispheres.
I suggest it is not a foregone conclusion that our next glaciation can’t happen for 10k to 50k years because the nature of Earth’s surface, continents, Isthmus of Panama blockage, oceans must also factor into the conditions for glaciation as well as the potential for trigger events like asteroids, giant fires, volcanic erruptions, and statistically low liklihood weather patterns and cycles.
JM VanWinkle says:
June 16, 2013 at 5:46 pm
JM,
Here is a file worth reading, although from 2005. The authors use model scenarios however the strengths and weakness of those models are discussed. Many interesting ideas but no firm conclusions except that NH June, July, August temperatures seem to be the limiting factor in the creation of permanent NH ice sheets. Obliquity was the most dominant of the 3 orbital parameters but could be overridden at times by the eccentricity/precession combination when other smaller amplifying conditions came into play. I found it interesting that there was a representation that CO2 was one of the amplifiers but with no claim to anthropogenic CO2, just CO2 ppm in general. There seemed to be thresholds where CO2 could tip the scales when the orbital parameters were battling it out to bring on a new glacial period or not: under 270 ppm no effect on ice sheets, between 270 -350 ppm limiting of ice sheets, above 350 ppm no ice sheets. If his turned out to be correct, we may have actually prevented the onset of the next glacial period, at least for a while anyway.
But as you said, I have no worries here in Florida. Life has been evolving in warm areas through many hundreds of thousands of years of glaciations. Warmer is always better.
http://www.cgd.ucar.edu/staff/ajahn/TheoriesLGI_Jahn.pdf
“I’ve been trying to jazz it up recently by telling tales of Hannibal crossing the Alps with elephants. However when you introduce new stuff you learn new stuff. There may not have been snow up in those passes, back then, but still it was pretty cold for elephants. Apparently some got pneumonia and died.”
They all did, from what I remember. One lasted until the following spring, but was too sick to go on the campaign. It died shortly thereafter.
On the bright side, we should be able to walk to London. We’ll save a fortune of air fare!
Chicago looks better then than now.
JM VanWinkle says:
June 14, 2013 at 6:59 pm
….So, I am wondering if this might be the point of regime change, with the sun going quiet and the ocean cycles going negative. Any brave souls out there that has a tea leaf read on it or, even better, reasons?
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Try the following WUWT threads:
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2011/01/05/on-“trap-speed-acc-and-the-snr/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/12/30/the-antithesis/
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2012/10/02/can-we-predict-the-duration-of-an-interglacial/
Very interesting, I love xkcd. Thanks for sharing